Lamb Stew

My roommate Kelley and I split a giant plate of lamb stew, piled high with mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, greens, and carrots at O'Neill's a few times during my last stay in Dublin. If you ask me, lamb stew is superior to most stews, and I'm not exactly sure why. Also, if you ask me, it smells a little funky cooking up, but Spouse doesn't think so. I think the difference of our opinion stems from the fact that I know what the sheep part of the barn smells like, and there's an element of that odor that's embedded in the meat. Same with pork sometimes, but anyway. Rather than go on and on about smelly animals, and put you off the idea entirely, let me encourage you to make this stew since it's easy, cheap, and unbelievably delicious.

For 4 servings:

2 Lamb shoulder chops ($2.50 or less apiece!)
3 small or 1 1/2 medium onions
2 carrots
3-4 red potatoes
a few cups of water, plus 1 can of some kind of broth (I used chicken in spite of inter-species weirdness this suggests)
a couple sprigs of rosemary

Cut the chops into bite-size chunks and season with salt and pepper. There are bones in these things, so instead of cutting the meat off the bone very carefully while it's raw, just cut roughly around the bone and throw it in the pot with the rest.
In a soup pot over medium-high heat, brown the chunks of lamb in a little bit of olive oil. Let the pieces get nice and brown before you stir them around.
Cut the onions into bite-size chunks and throw those in.
When the meat is browned, scoot it off to the side, and if there's not enough fat in the bottom of the pot to make a roux, pour in a little bit more olive oil. Sprinkle a bit of flour into the fat, like a tablespoon or so, and scrape it around with a fork until it gets a little brown. Pour in a cup or so of water and scrape up the brown bits on the bottom of the pot. Pour in more water, and/or broth, enough to cover the meat, as well as the carrots and potatoes you're about to put in. More liquid means it'll be more soupy, less stewy, so add a little at a time if you're not sure.
Chop the carrots and potatoes into similarly-sized chunks and throw those in along with the rosemary. I usually put carrots in ahead of potatoes since they take a little bit longer to cook, but everything's going to fall apart in the stew anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
Bring it all to a boil, then let it simmer for an hour or so, until the meat is really tender. If the liquid part of the stew isn't as thick as you'd like, mix a tablespoon or so of cornstarch with a little cold water, and stir that in. Do NOT just dump cornstarch into the stew, because you'll never get it to dissolve.
Fish out the bones and the woody stalks left over from the rosemary before serving.

Note: the shoulder cut, whether it's lamb or pork or beef or whatever, requires a long cooking time in liquid to be edible. Pick out a piece of lamb after a while and see if it's tender--if not, let it go a while longer.

I know my chicken, you got to know your chicken*

Brine That Chicken!
Take a 3.5-ish pound chicken, remove giblets and whatever else the meat packer people decided to stuff in the cavity, and rinse that bad boy. Let it hang out in the sink while you do the following:
Bring 2-ish cups of water to a boil. Pour in 1/2 cup salt, and like 1/4 to 1/3 cup brown sugar. I scooped it out of the canister with my (clean) fingers, so I'm not sure about the measure. I suggest 1/4 cup. Stir until that's all dissolved. Dump in some peppercorns, like 1 tablespoon or so, and a bay leaf or two, plus whatever herbs you like. I'm always partial to rosemary so I snipped off a couple sprigs and also dumped in about a tablespoon of dried thyme. Stick your head over the water and smell it. This is what your chicken will taste like, so if you don't like it, start over with the water, salt, and sugar.
Dump a bunch of ice in a big stock pot, or a bowl that's big enough for the chicken to hang out in completely submerged. Pour the hot brining liquid over it, and stir it around so it cools off completely. The recipes all say you should refrigerate this so it's totally chilled before you put the bird in, but I see no reason to wait if it's chilled down so much that the ice cubes won't melt anymore.
Submerge the chicken in the brine, and set it in the fridge for at least an hour, and up to 4 or 5 hours. I think we went just over 4 hours, and that was enough.
Preheat oven to 425 F (200-215 C).
After all that's done, take the chicken out and rinse it off well to get all the bits of herb off of it. Dry it off completely or the skin won't crisp and get brown, and stuff it with a quartered onion, and maybe some garlic too if you're into that sort of thing. I like to cut little slits in that flabby skin that hangs around the cavity, criss-cross the legs, and tuck the ends into the slits so it stays sort of trussed up in its own anatomy, and bend the wing tips behind its shoulders. Slather some olive oil on the skin, and throw on some ground pepper.
Set it in the roasting pan of your choice, and let it go for an hour or so, or until the meaty part of the thigh registers 170 F (75 C). Take it out of the oven and let it sit around for 15 minutes or so, then carve away.
It's just too good.

*Title courtesy Cibo Matto, song still stuck in my head from ten years ago...

Brown Bread!

It's not the super-dark, super-chunky brown bread I really, really love, but it is good. If you've never had the pleasure of going to Ireland and learning to adjust your vocabulary, "brown bread" is simply whole wheat bread. Black coffee is black coffee, but coffee with milk in it is white coffee. They're big on colors, I think. Anyway, here's a nice low round loaf of the brown bread exactly like what I got at the B&B in Thurles for breakfast:

2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for kneading
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 cups well-shaken buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together all the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Blend in the chunks of butter either with a pastry blender or by smushing the butter together with the flour mixture with your fingertips. I prefer the fingertip method, as it seems to go quite a bit faster and with less effort.
When it resembles coarse meal, make a well in the center and pour in the buttermilk. Mix the wet and dry together gradually until it makes a dough.
At this point you can take it out and knead it for a few minutes on a floured surface until it's smooth, but it works just as well if you knead it with one hand in the bowl it's in (provided it's big enough). I'm always on the lookout for ways to cut down on the mess.
Press the dough into a 9" cake pan, buttered if it's not nonstick. With a sharp knife, cut a 1/2" deep "X" across the top and chuck it in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until it's lightly browned on top.
Cool it on a rack in the pan for a few minutes before popping it out. Cool for a half hour or more before slicing.

Sorta Saltimbocca

Now watch Rachael Ray steal that title from me. Sounds very Rachael Ray-esque, does it not? Anyway, here's the story. I perused the contents of the fridge last night (it being a fridge in a small Dublin apartment--is there any other kind?--it's exceptionally small, so it took no time at all) and did the calculus of expiration dates. Most things don't keep nearly as long here, which tends to retrain your attitudes towards portion sizes (no leftovers, please) and grocery-shopping schedules. Kelley had bought a 4-pack of chicken breasts, a pack of prosciutto di Parma, and had some mozzarella hanging around in the back, all of which was approaching obsolescence quickly. I didn't pay for these groceries, and normally I stay well away of what's not mine; but in this case it's more appropriate to use what's there than let it go to waste just so I can claim good roommate behavior. So here's what I did:
I took out one of the breasts, pounded it flat with a pan (boy did that hurt...har, har), salt and pepper, then took a couple chunks of mozzarella and a couple slices of prosciutto and laid them in the middle, then folded the flattened chicken over and around it.
And then I browned the whole tasty little package in a nonstick skillet with olive oil. Ta-da!
You have to be good about not cooking on too high a heat, lest the chicken burn on the outside and stay raw on the inside, and browning it pretty well on both sides, then putting the lid on and taking it off the heat for 10 minutes or so seemed to produce perfect results. Or you could brown it to your preference and chuck it in the oven for 10-15 minutes to finish. It all depends on the thickness of the chicken, I guess.

Apple cake

You need a 9" springform pan for this one. And some apples that are good for baking, like the tart, sort of dry ones.

Preheat oven to 400. Peel, core, and slice 4 medium or 5 small apples into wedges, 10-12 wedges per apple.

1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. sugar
1 T baking powder
1/8 t. salt

Put the above in a bowl and whisk it around to mix.

2 eggs
1/3 c. milk
2 T vegetable oil
1/2 t. vanilla

Put the above in a small bowl and mix.

Put the wet and dry ingredients together. Fold in the apple wedges. The object of this game is to coat the apple wedges thoroughly. Pour the batter into the greased springform pan. IMPORTANT: put the springform pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips. You may think that the springform pan seals well enough to prevent dribbling out the bottom, but you'd be wrong. And then you'd race downstairs at the smell of burning something-or-other only to discover your mistake. Your smelly, smelly mistake.
Bake 25 minutes or so, until it's golden and firm on top. In the meantime, whip up the custard topping:

1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
3 T melted butter
Mix all this together well and pour over the cake. Stick it back in the oven for another 10 minutes, or until the custard is set.

Cool on a rack, and dive in. No ice cream required for this one...

Sauce from fresh tomatoes

I've never had really good results with my marinara made from fresh tomatoes, but that's because I never thought to add carrots. We're inundated with Romas at the moment (tomatoes, not the people), and the best way to use up a gob of them is to do the sauce. Here's an estimation of the very successful sauce I made yesterday:

Roma tomatoes
Diced onions
Chopped garlic
Finely grated carrots
Tomato paste
Salt
Oregano and/or Basil (dried seemed to work better)

1. Fill a large-ish pot with water and bring to a boil. Prepare a large-ish ice bath on the side. Cut a small "X" in the end of each tomato, and drop them into the boiling water, being careful not to burn the hell out of yourself in the process. Let them roll around in the water until you start to see the skin split up the side, pluck them out of the boiling water, and drop them in the ice bath until cool enough to handle. Peel the skin off each tomato and set aside.
2. When all your tomatoes are through that process, core, seed, and dice them. It's a little time-consuming to get all the seeds out, but it's worth it if you're a little fastidious about seeds and wateriness in your sauce, which I am.
3. In a pot big enough to hold all your tomatoes, heat some olive oil and dump in as much diced onion as you like. I ended up with about 5 cups of tomatoes, and I used 1 1/2 small-ish yellow onions, diced. Saute the onions until they start to go translucent, then drop in a few cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped. I always sprinkle in a little crushed red pepper at this point as well.
4. Finely grate a carrot (less or more, depending on the amount of tomatoes), and dump that in to soften. After a couple of minutes, add 1/4 cup or so of tomato paste. Both of these ingredients will give the sauce a richness more than a sweetness, but will take that acidic raw flavor out of the tomatoes. Smush the paste around to warm it through and brown a little on the bottom of the pan.
5. Add the tomatoes and a good amount of salt. I sprinkled directly from the big salt container, probably 1/2 t. or more. Do the same with oregano and basil (I prefer a combination of the two rather than just straight basil, which is too sweet for me). You can always add more of these, but you can't take them away, so while the tomatoes cook down, taste the sauce every now and then and adjust.
6. Let the sauce cook down until the tomatoes are losing their shape and getting all saucy, maybe an hour or more. As for yield, I started with 20 tomatoes and ended up with two 1/2-quart containers.

Rustic Plum Cake

I know you're thinking, "Plums? In a cake? Nah, I'll just have the standard chocolate-with-chocolate frosting." Well, my friend, you would've made the wrong choice. This cake is super good, and easy to boot, since you make the batter in a food processor. The recipe is from Cook's Illustrated, but I ran short on, or didn't have some ingredients, so I improvised.

2T red currant or seedless raspberry jam (I had huckleberry jam from the mother-in-law's trip through Montana)
3T brandy (I used water--you basically just need something to dilute the jam to make syrup)
1 pound Italian prune plums, halved and pitted (This is about 12 plums. Italian plums are the little sort of oblong ones)

3/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. slivered almonds (I didn't have quite enough, so I filled out the amount with walnuts, no harm done)
3/4 c. all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pan
1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
6T unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces, softened but still cool
1 large egg plus 1 large yolk
1 t. vanilla extract
1/4 t. almond extract (optional: I left it out)

1. Cook jam and brandy/water in a 10-inch skillet 2-3 minutes until reduced to a thick syrup. They say to use nonstick, but I don't have one of those, and my regular old stainless-steel worked fine. Remove skillet from heat and place the plums cut-side down in the syrup. Return skillet to medium heat and cook until plums start to release their juices and a thick syrup forms again, about 5 minutes. While this is going on, shake the pan a few times to keep the plums from sticking. Cool plums in the pan while you make the batter.

2. Put oven rack in the middle and preheat to 350. Grease and flour a 9" springform pan. If you don't have a springform pan, just use a regular 9" cake pan like I did, but make sure you cover all inside surfaces well in the greasing-and-flouring process.

3. In a food processor, process almonds and sugar together until the nuts are finely ground. Add flour, baking powder, and salt, and pulse to combine. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse sand, about ten 1-second pulses. This may take a little longer if, like me, you were impatient and didn't let the butter soften enough. Add eggs, vanilla, and almond extract (if you're using it), and process until smooth, about 5 seconds, scraping the bowl if necessary. This batter is quite thick.

4. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and spread it around evenly with a spatula. You really have to make sure you keep the batter ahead of the spatula and push it to the edges of the pan. Now, for the plums! Stir them around a bit to get them coated with syrup. By hand, or with a spoon, place the plums one at a time into the batter, cut side up. 12 should be just enough to cover the surface with two concentric circles and one in the middle.

5. Bake 40-50 minutes, or until a wooden skewer or toothpick comes out with a few crumbs attached. If you used a cake pan like I did, let the cake cool for 15-30 min. before you do the magic flip. Invert a dinner plate or cooling rack or other big flat surface onto the pan, then flip both over so the cake falls out upside down onto the plate. Repeat with a serving platter so the cake ends up right side up and ready to serve. Dust it with some confectioner's sugar while you're at it.

Cole slaw

I had to use a flash for this to come out right, so the color balance is a little off. This slaw is pretty monochromatic, though, so maybe that's actually what it looks like. Anyway, here's how I made it:

(4 servings)

• About 1/3 of a head of cabbage--slice it off one side. Cut the sliced-off portion in half to produce two wedges. Slice crosswise into thin ribbons.
• Thinly slice as much onion as you like, and try to keep the same general shape going as the cabbage: cut an onion in half, and then slice thinly crosswise to produce semi-circular pieces.
• Do the same with some mild peppers. We used the 3 Hungarian wax peppers we got in our weekly produce basket. Regular bell peppers might actually be too much for this slaw.
• Chop up a couple stems' worth of oregano and flat-leaf parsley.
• Put all of the above in a big bowl and toss.

Dressing: highly improvisational

• A tablespoon or so of red wine vinegar
• 2 T or so of seasoned rice vinegar (milder, and slightly sweet)
• 2T or so olive oil
• 1-2T of mayonnaise
• Pepper
  

Whisk all this together in a separate bowl. Taste, and adjust to your preference. If too tangy, add a little sugar or more olive oil. Dump in the slaw and toss it around to get everything coated. Let it sit in the fridge for a little bit before serving. Yum.

Beef & Broccoli Stir-fry

I got this one from America's Test Kitchen, and give it two enthusiastic thumbs up--the original is great, and it's pretty forgiving if you take stuff out and put stuff in, too. You can totally leave out the steak and put in shrimp, chicken, or tofu.
Also, you should know this is a pretty simple dish, but it requires a lot of attention. There's no turning away from the stove once you've started, so make sure your rice (or pasta, as in my case) is already taken care of.

1 lb. flank steak (flank is best because it's most tender, but much cheaper sirloin steaks work as well)
soy sauce
1 bunch broccoli, cut into florets. Peel and cube the stem too if you want. I'm too lazy.
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/4" dice
1 1/2" piece of ginger, diced or grated and dressed with 1 1/2 t. oil (this keeps it from sticking)
Several cloves of garlic (I use 5-6)

Stir-fry sauce
5T oyster sauce
2T chicken stock (or water)
1t sesame oil
2T brown sugar
2T dry sherry (red wine works in a pinch)
1t cornstarch

Whisk all of the above together and set aside.

Put steak into freezer for 10 minutes to an hour to make the knife work easier. Slice with the grain into 2" strips, then cut across the grain very thin. Marinate the strips in soy sauce from a few minutes to an hour.
Drain the beef and preheat a nonstick skillet on super-high heat. You want to be in fear for your life at the heat of this skillet.
Work in batches with the meat: add 1T veg. oil to the skillet, then half of the beef. Brown and remove it to a bowl. Do the same with the other half.
Add another 1T oil and make sure it's come back up to super-high heat. Add broccoli and cook until it starts to brown a little. Add 1/2 c. water and cover. Steam until it's just lost its rawness--mushy broccoli is the antithesis of this dish (and life itself, if you ask me), so don't let it go too long. Remove and drain on paper towels.
If the pan isn't completely dry, get yourself some tongs and a paper towel and wipe it out. Make sure it comes back up to super-high heat again.
Put another 1T oil in the pan, and add the peppers until they start to brown. Add the ginger and garlic, and keep it moving so it won't burn.
Add in broccoli, beef, and sauce. Reduce the heat and stir it around until the cornstarch works its magic and thickens up.

Serve with rice. Or if you have a personal problem with rice (as I inexplicably do), it works beautifully with spaghetti noodles. Just make sure to let the noodles finish in the sauce so they soak it up.

Linguine and clams

This is stupid easy, and right up your alley if you, like me, prefer lightly-dressed pasta.

Put water on to boil.

Chop up:
6 fillets of anchovies
4 cloves of garlic (smash with the side of a knife and chop)
a handful of flat-leaf parsley

Open a 15-oz. can of baby clams
Open a bottle of white wine (I always use Pinot Grigio for this since it's very light and dry)

When the water comes to a boil, dump a tablespoon or two of salt in, and slide in some linguine. One serving is a handful about 1 inch across the end. I really should take pictures to demonstrate.

In a fairly wide skillet, heat some olive oil, enough to coat the bottom of the pan and let stuff slide around. Don't let the oil get too hot or the bits of water in the anchovies will leap out and blind you.
Put in the anchovies and garlic, and crush the anchovy bits with a wooden spoon so they dissolve in the oil.
Sprinkle in some crushed red pepper for a tad of a kick.
Sprinkle in about 1t. of dried thyme
Pour in about 1/2 c. of the wine to deglaze the pan and get any of those cooked bits off the bottom. Let that simmer for a couple minutes, then pour in the clams (with juice) and let it simmer.

Drain the pasta when it's just under al dente, and plop that into the skillet. Alternatively, if you think you have too much sauce for the pasta, put the pasta back in its pot and pour as much sauce as you want into the pasta pot. Let the pasta finish cooking in the sauce, and put in the parsley at the end.

Eat up with a loaf of crusty bread and don't let yourself think about what a carbfest this meal is.

Fun with whole wheat

These are some fine cookies. No ifs, ands, or buts about the lack of white flour. They're just plain excellent cookies.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 c. rolled oats
1 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/4 c. (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1/4 c. canola oil (or vegetable oil)
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1 c. chocolate chips (dark chocolate is the best)
A handful of nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Using a blender or a food processor, grind the oats until they resemble flour. I used quick-cooking oats which are flimsier than traditional oats, so it didn't take but a few seconds. Mix the oat flour with the dry ingredients in a bowl.
In a mixer with that paddle beater, not the whisk one, beat the butter until "fluffy." This "fluffy" state has never been particularly apparent to me, but I just beat until it starts to lighten in color a little bit. Add oil, sugars, egg, and vanilla, and beat until smooth and creamy.
With the mixer still running, add the dry ingredients and quit mixing when they're incorporated. One of these looks like it would make the job easier, but otherwise, just be vigilant. If you have a KitchenAid (what my sister calls "the concrete mixer"), you've experienced shock and awe at flying ingredients; or at the least, a cloud of flour that blinds and thwarts your baking plans.
Dump in the chocolate chips and/or nuts and mix. The batter is pretty stiff, but you can do it by hand if you're afraid of murdering the chips and nut bits. If you live without air conditioning, keep your chips in the fridge. Otherwise you'll end up with melted chocolate streaks throughout the dough. Not that I'd know anything about this.
Drop little wads of dough a little smaller than a golf ball on a couple baking sheets--it's a crumbly batter, especially if you put nuts in too, so you may need to do some hand-shaping and squeezing to get them to become real cookies. Bake until the cookies are firm around the edges and golden on top, about 15 minutes.

This is NOT a low-calorie food, but you get a bonus of 1g of fiber for each cookie!

Best comfort food. But wait until fall for this one.

Don't think too much about the "bacon" and "fat" and "skin." So this dish isn't the healthiest thing you could eat, but it may be the tastiest, and I won't rest until all the meatatarians I know have tried it and loved it as much as we do.

Baked Chicken with White Beans and Tomatoes

6 bacon slices, cut into 1-in. pieces
4 lg. chicken thighs with skin and bones
2 med. onions, chopped
1 can stewed tomatoes, including juice
2 cans small white beans, rinsed and drained (I used navy beans)

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat to 350.
Cook bacon in 10-in. ovenproof skillet (I used the handy-dandy cast-iron skillet), and drain on paper towels. Leave fat in skillet.
Meanwhile, season chicken with salt and pepper. Brown chicken in bacon fat over medium-high heat. Drain on paper towels.
Pour off all but 3 T of fat from skillet and reduce heat to medium. Cook onions with 1/4 t. salt and scrape up stuff left from bacon and chicken. Cook until soft, about 10 minutes.
Stir in tomatoes; boil uncovered 3 minutes. Stir in bacon and beans, and bring to a simmer.
Nestle chicken, skin side up, in beans and bake uncovered about 25 minutes. Check the chicken temp with a meat thermometer to make sure it's done.

Like all great comfort foods, this is even better the next day.

The best chocolate cake around. Seriously.

CHOCOLATE SOUR CREAM CAKE

2 1/4 oz natural cocoa (not Dutch processed) (Note: I didn't weigh the cocoa, but I estimated just over 1/4 of the 8-oz. box, dumped out that much in the bowl, and that seems to have been the right amount.)
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped very fine or grated
1 tsp instant espresso powder (Note: I used a heaping tablespoon of instant coffee)
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup sour cream, room temp
8 3/4 oz (1 3/4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
12 tablespoons (6 oz) unsalted butter, room temp
14 oz (2 cups) packed light brown sugar (Note: I ran out of brown sugar and had to substitute about 1/4 c. white sugar. It turned out fine, but don't substitute too much.)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
5 large eggs, room temp

Heavy cream for whipping, and raspberries (optional, but highly recommended)

1. To line the pan, either use some fancy-dancy "cake release spray" or do it like the America's Test Kitchens people did. Melt some butter and dump some cocoa in it until it looks good enough to pour on anything you can think of. Do NOT attempt to taste this mixture, no matter how good it looks or smells. You'll spend the next several minutes hacking and spitting, and your faith in chocolate will be shaken. Use a fancy-dancy "pastry brush" or a little paintbrush you bought several years ago and have to monitor for shedding bristles now and then to paint the inside of the bundt pan. This is so the outside of the cake doesn't have the bitterness of the butter-and-flour method, or at least that's what I remember the America's Test Kitchens people saying.

2. Grate or chop the chocolate. This takes a while, and one gets bored, so make sure the radio is on with a really interesting interview or something. I would suggest making this cake around 1 to 2pm, when Fresh Air is on.
Preheat the oven to 350, and put the rack in the lower third of the oven.

3. Put the 3/4 c. water on to boil. Dump the cocoa, chopped/grated chocolate, and espresso powder in a medium heatproof bowl (I used my smaller stainless steel mixing bowl). When the water boils, pour that in and whisk the hell out of it until it looks smooth and yummy. Again, do NOT attempt to taste this, for the reasons mentioned above. The original recipe says to set it aside to cool it to room temp, but I just set the bowl in my bigger stainless steel bowl with some ice water and stirred it there for a minute or so. When it cools to room temp, whisk in the sour cream until it's all incorporated and a lovely creamy brown color.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda. You could do it in a sifter, but you have to do the whole dry ingredients-wet ingredients-dry ingredients-wet ingredients thing so it's easier if it's in a bowl.

4. If you're not as stubborn as me, and you don't love your whisk like I do, go to the mixer with the butter, sugar, and vanilla, and beat that together until "pale and fluffy," although I have to say I don't think I've ever seen this mixture become particularly fluffy. Maybe I'm missing something. The recipe says to beat it in the mixer for about 3 minutes. I think this translated to 5 minutes by hand, but I just beat it until the mixture was consistent and the color I was thinking of painting the dining room at one point. How's that for precision? If you're using a mixer, reduce speed to medium and add the eggs one at a time, incorporating them fully after each addition. If you're using your arm and a whisk, disregard the instructions about speed and add the eggs one at a time, incorporating them fully after each addition.

5. If you're using a mixer, make sure you scrape the sides of the bowl down so you don't get chunks of unmixed ingredients in the finished product. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and incorporate it fully; add 1/2 of the chocolate mixture and incorporate it; repeat with another 1/3 of the flour; the other half of the chocolate; and the remaining flour. Don't overmix--mix just until it's consistent throughout, and then stand back and see how pretty the finished batter is. You're in safe territory as far as tasting at this stage, unless raw eggs in the batter turn you off (I personally don't have a problem with this, having eaten my weight in cookie batter over the years).

6. This is a thick batter, and pouring into a bundt pan is usually a pain in the neck. I found that scooping it out one spatula-full at a time worked better than trying to pour around the circle. To get rid of air bubbles or whatnot, pick up the full pan and thunk it on the counter a few times. Stick it in the oven and go do something else for 45-50 minutes. Do the wooden skewer test to check for doneness. When you're satisfied that it's not still liquid on the inside, put an upside-down cooling rack on the top and flip the pan over to cool for a couple hours or so, after which point the cake should pop right out of the pan.

7. Fresh whipped cream is so good, and so easy you shouldn't even think of doing the Cool Whip thing, and ice cream is just way too heavy and sweet for this cake. My years of experience (torture) in the kitchen at 15th & Olive on dessert duty taught me that the quickest, easiest, and best way to go about it is to take a stainless-steel bowl of a size that allows you to move the whisk around in heavy cream of sufficient depth (not more than 1/2" or so or else you'll be whisking all night), stick that in a larger bowl with ice, and whisk away. Cream that's too warm won't peak like it should. You're not so much stirring as beating--the goal is to get air into the cream so this part of the process creates a racket, especially if you're using a metal bowl with a metal whisk. Once you get some volume, but not stiffness, sprinkle in some powdered sugar and continue whisking. You should add a little at a time and taste along the way. It can get really sweet really quickly. Cut a slice of your cake, dump a dollop of whipped cream on it, and throw some raspberries on top. A sprig of mint looks awful purty on top, and if you have mint growing anywhere around your house, you can undoubtedly spare a sprig or fifty.

Eggs+mujadrah+queso fresco=International delight!

I'm never exactly sure how to transliterate Arabic words, but mujadrah looks about right, and that's the most common spelling on google. So it has to be right, right? Here's a recipe, but Zee swears (and I can attest) that it's easier than that. You cook up some lentils, you cook up some rice (brown or white), you mix it together with a bunch of chopped onions you cooked within an inch of their lives, add in some sumac (not the ubiquitous poison sumac of Kentucky fencerows, although it is red), sage, and salt, and ta-da! You find yourself eating more than your stomach can hold.
Hopefully you put aside some leftovers. You can then toss a half cup or so into a hot skillet with olive oil in the bottom, whip up a couple eggs, pour that over the leftover mujadrah and wait for the eggs to set up (you can stick the skillet in a warm oven of about 325-350 if you're making a bigger batch and the eggs look like they'll take a while to set. (although don't do that if your skillet's handle isn't oven-proof.) Crumble some queso fresco on top. It's a salty Mexican cheese that doesn't melt, but it gets all warm and squidgy and the whole thing is soooo yummy. I can't even think of a good phrase that would encompass the Italian frittata, the Lebanese/Syrian mujadrah, and the Mexican cheese. Feel free to help me out there.
Now go forth and mix your own bunch of leftovers in together and see what happens!

Derby food. Conclusion: Pork=delicious

A good race, no? Unfortunately I drew Great Hunter to win and Sedgefield to lose, so my carefully invested $2 brought no return whatsoever. Spouse's work buddy won the loser draw with Cowtown Cat, and SO'B did an interesting victory dance after lucking out by drawing Street Sense. And then we all sat with mouths open at the post-race interview with jockey Calvin Borel. A combination of toothlessness plus Louisiana provenance spelled utter confusion for us, even those of us who are fairly conversant in many southern banjo-sounding dialects.
But more important than the race...the food. At 10am I put in 10 pounds of pork shoulder roast that had been dry-rubbed the previous afternoon with some mixture of garlic powder, paprika, brown sugar, salt and pepper, etc. By noon, the house smelled a little like a barnyard, since the oven was on too low to get that nice roasted meat smell right off the bat. But by 3:30, my goodness, my goodness. We set the meat out to cool a little bit, and the T then set to shredding the meat and mixing in the sauce. The meat was delicious by itself (though nobody but me and T knew this, since no one was here to pick off a bite or two before it got dunked in sauce), but the sauce. Oh, the sauce. Vinegary, a little touch of sweetness, man oh man. Should you want to replicate our results, you'd have to add a little more ketchup than that in the following recipe. Do not under any circumstances try to get any sense of the flavor of the sauce by smelling it. It's vinegar, and it will burn a trail to your brain. Not in a good way, either.

BBQ sauce (stolen from Tyler Florence)
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup yellow or brown mustard
1/2 cup ketchup (I'd suggest doubling this)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Put all this in a saucepot over medium heat, stirring and cooking for about 10 minutes. Seriously, keep your head away from the area above the pot, and if you have a vent, use it. If you don't, open all the nearest windows in the house and get some air flowing through to carry the vinegar smell away.
Mix it with your shredded pork to your desired sloppiness and chow down (I prefer a wet, but not sopping wet barbecue). Oh me oh my, is it good.

We also had the richest derby pie I've ever made (I'm not sure I can even try to eat another slice, having had but half a slice yesterday), a Bobby Flay green-onion-and-red-cabbage slaw I cribbed from Smitten Kitchen, BBQ chicken skewers (marinated in the same bbq sauce as above), toasted sauteed veggie and mozzarella sandwiches, guacamole, pico de gallo, and black bean dip (thanks to SO'B), and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. I can't eat anymore. I will make an exception for the pork bbq, though.

Big, fluffy, made-for-gravy biscuits

I've been trying and mostly failing to make such biscuits for a long time now, but the days of failure are over! This may have something to do with the fact that I bought new baking powder instead of using the same stuff I've had forever and no telling how old it was. The great thing about these biscuits is that they use stuff you generally have around--no need to buy buttermilk or shortening.

Baking Powder Biscuits

Preheat oven to 450.

Whisk together in a bowl:
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 t. sugar
1 t. salt

Take 2 T butter (make sure it's cold) and drop it into the flour. Work it into the flour by pinching and squeezing the bits of butter until it's all incorporated. Once that's done, do the same with 5 T more butter. Cutting it into small chunks before the pinching and squeezing operation helps. When it's ready, there shouldn't be any flour-covered butter chunks bigger than a pea, and the mixture should look fairly consistent.
Stir 3/4 c. milk into the mixture. Gather up all the dry bits into the dough by hand. Once you have everything from the bowl incorporated into a big wad of dough, press it out on a floured work surface in a rectangular shape until it's about 1/2" thick. Fold it like a letter into thirds and press it down to 1/2" again. Fold it like a letter again (this helps the biscuit to be flaky and somewhat layered) and press it into a rectangle about 5" by 8".
Cut out biscuits with a biscuit-cutter or a glass (I used a plastic cup about 3" wide with the bottom punched out to let the air out as you press down) and put them on an ungreased cookie sheet an inch or so apart. Use the leftover dough scraps to form a couple more biscuits.
You can then brush the tops with melted butter if you want, but I didn't, since I figured there was probably enough butter in them to begin with. Bake 15 minutes or until they brown a bit on top.
Voila! Homemade biscuits!